"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"But that on the good ground, are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience."   -Luke 8:15 [KJV]   Disciple, tread warily on this good ground. Speak cautiously about it. Lest thy soul be lifted up, and thou shouldest say, I made myself to differ . My nature is better to receive the seed, and my heart more honest and good to retain it, than others. Know thyself by nature upon a level with wayside, stony-ground, and thorny hearers. See what is predicted of these blessed hearers. Examine if we are of the happy number: if so, let us fall down in humility, and cry, What hath God wrought! Let us give all the glory to the God of all grace .    (1st.) “That on good ground.” It is made good by the labour of the husbandman: tilled, cultivated, and made fit to receive the seed, by the grace of the Spirit, in an honest and good heart. No man has such a heart naturally. The heart is deceitful above ...

"He brought me to the banqueting-house, and His banner over me was love." - Song of Solomon 2:4 [KJV]   In whatever sense thou art led, my soul, to look at the banqueting-house of Jesus, thy joy will be great in the contemplation. And if He who hath prepared the banqueting-house, and well stored it with every thing to afford a spiritual repast, will lead thee thither, and regale thee there with the rich enjoyment of Himself, and the fulness of blessings in Him, thou wilt have a feast of fat things indeed! Come then, this evening, and take a view of Jesus' banqueting-house, and wait on thy kind and condescending Lord. He hath been known to take home many a poor waiting hungry sinner, that hath been on the look-out for Him, to His banqueting-house, and given him a gracious, full, and satisfying entertainment.   Come then, my soul, and see this banqueting-house of Jesus. Some have looked at it as the covenant itself of redemption; for this is indeed a house of ...

"Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." -John 14:1 [KJV]   To believe in God is to believe in Him as He has manifested Himself in His dear Son in all the fulness of His love, in all the riches of His grace, and in all the depth of His mercy. God must be seen, not in the terrors of a holy law, but in the mercy and truth of the glorious gospel of the Son of God, and thus be approached and believed in as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our Father in Him. How few see and realise this, and yet how sorely exercised are many of the living family upon this point!    To believe in God in such a way as to bring pardon and peace into their conscience; to believe in God so as to find manifest acceptance with Him; to believe in God so as to call Him Abba, Father , and feel that the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are His children; to believe in God so as to find Him a very present help in trouble; to receive answers to prayer, to w...